Martin-Green: Star Trek And Diversity
2 min read
For Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek is all about diversity.
The actress realized that when she watched the show as a child. “What struck me,” she said, “was the diversity, and the theme of true acceptance, realizing that there really is no such thing as other – that you and I are really no different, because we’re both living and breathing. That was not lost on me. As a child, I knew that’s what Star Trek stood for.”
She doesn’t comprehend fans who are upset with the diverse cast in Star Trek: Discovery. “Some people who claim to love Star Trek say they were very upset by the diversity – and that’s completely antithetical to me,” she said. “You cannot separate Star Trek from its legacy, from its universality, because that is what it is – it’s not even a part of it, that is Star Trek.
“And so, these people who say that they love Star Trek ‘but, ugh, this diversity sucks’ or whatever; I just I think it’s a testament to the blindness that’s plaguing us. It really is blindness; this inability to connect or empathize, this inability to see yourself in someone you perceive as different from you. That’s a hard thing to do. It’s uncomfortable; it’s inconvenient; and I think it can be even scary for some people to connect with someone different from themselves – but that’s what we have to do, and that’s what we strive to do in Star Trek.”
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